Back when I posted an extended viability rankings project for RBY on Smogon, there were a handful of NFEs that other players suggested I add. Haunter was one of them, so I then inevitably found myself begrudgingly testing it. And honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about it. It’s clearly bad, but better than I expected, and its overall impact on the rest of the team is simultaneously its greatest strength and its greatest weakness.
Obviously, Haunter is worse than Gengar in every respect. This in turn means that Haunter must be run alongside Gengar, with the selling point being that you’re running multiple Ghost/Poison types. Poison typing is famously terrible in RBY, and Gengar and Haunter’s defensive stats aren’t great, so you can see how this leads to a team with inherent weaknesses. On the other hand, their typing enables them to thrive in certain matchups, most notably Snorlax that don’t run Earthquake. In that scenario Haunter frees up Gengar to play much more aggressively (likely by blowing up early) without forgoing that defensive coverage.
Outside of its impact on the rest of the team, Haunter isn’t actually that great. Its stats leave a lot to be desired, as basically all fast Pokemon in RBY outspeed it and it dies pretty easily. Most notably, it struggles to make offensive progress outside of sleep and Explosion due to a lack of STAB. Even its Explosion is weak, although since it sets up for revenge kills this is a much less substantial criticism than it seems.
Teambuilding
Building around Haunter is honestly rather constrained. Obviously you need a Gengar, while Tauros and Snorlax find a place on practically every RBY team. Chansey is also a pretty logical pick for its broad defensive utility, particularly against Psychic types. That really only leaves one spot to fill in, and frankly, there’s one option that fits so perfectly I think it’s hard to pass up- Exeggutor. With resistances to both Ground and Psychic it complements the Ghost types well and also gets to play differently with other sleep and Explosion users on the team.
Fortunately, the sets of each Pokemon offer greater flexibility. Admittedly, for Tauros I stuck to the standard set, as a boom-heavy team probably doesn’t want to skimp on coverage for Normal resists. Snorlax on the other hand I explored a couple options. I initially tested Amnesia, before swapping to a conventional AttackLax set. The theory behind Amnesia was that it would bait booms, while also potentially being a secondary win condition, however I frequently found myself outgunned in the Snorlax ditto.
I did pick a basic BoltBeam set for Chansey, but there’s a lot of flexibility there, especially if you want to drop Tbolt. After all, you’ve got 2 Ghost types that can use it to scare out Waters. Ice Beam I’d be a little more hesitant to drop, as I think hitting Rhydon is valuable here. Gengar and Haunter are obviously both running Hypnosis and Explosion, but can run pretty much any coverage options in their remaining slots. The only thing to note is that with Haunter’s reduced power it should probably be running Seismic Toss or Night Shade. I went with Tbolt/NS for Gengar and Psy/NS for Haunter to perform against Lax.
Lastly there’s Exeggutor. With Gengar and Haunter on the team, you’re already covered in terms of sleep and boom, so if you want to run an unconventional Egg set that drops Sleep Powder and/or Explosion, everything’s there for you. I went with a not-so-adventurous dual powder set, as even with all that said, I think having redundant sleep users is valuable, especially when Exeggutor’s matchups into sleep blockers are substantially different from the Ghosts. I guess if I want to experiment with unique Egg sets, I’ll have to specifically build for it. One other thing to note with Egg’s set, is that I think it’s difficult to drop Stun Spore, as Chansey is the only other reliable paralysis spreader on the team.
This all leads to the team below. As always, the importable can be found here.
Results
Using Haunter left me feeling somewhat conflicted on its viability. Even when you ignore the fact that Gengar exists, it’s not a great Pokemon. Yes, it has Explosion and sleep, as well as the unique Ghost/Poison typing, but they all come with caveats. Hypnosis is an incredibly unreliable move, its Explosion is weak, and its terrible bulk means it struggles to offer defensive utility outside a few favourable matchups (especially given its poor damage output).
When you consider that Gengar does exist, that just makes things weird. Running both of them on the same team is obviously a risk, as they compound critical weaknesses to Psychic and Ground, making bad matchups a risk. However Haunter also offers its teammates far greater flexibility and freedom in how they’re played. This ladder match is perhaps a great example of this, as Haunter put in a strong showing after I blew Gengar up early and Egg died to bad luck. In that way, Haunter’s greatest impact, both good and bad, is on the overall structure and dynamic of the team.
I think it would be reasonable to describe Haunter as incredibly inconsistent- it’s carried hard by its typing, which makes it heavily matchup dependent. Walling Snorlax that lack Earthquake is incredibly valuable when it comes up. That’s not to mention the array of uncommon threats that can’t deal with Ghost types. Additionally, although Haunter’s stats suck, its bulk is just enough that only STAB Earthquake is capable of OHKOing it without a crit. This means you can count on Haunter to live at least one hit and retaliate, even against powerful Psychic types (barring crits). And as I mentioned earlier, Hypnosis is unreliable, a fact which has cost me games where Haunter would otherwise have helped tremendously.
For a pokemon this inconsistent, its viability can be hard to ascertain. Overall though, it’s firmly within that grey murky zone of viability, where there’s no clear boundary between what is and isn’t usable. I have it toward the lower end of this spectrum, occupying a tier alongside Hitmonchan. I probably wouldn’t use it ideally, but it’s really close to being usable.
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